1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process and an apparatus to find one end in a textile fiber band or sliver and to engage said end to feed members in a textile machine, said sliver being collected in a sliver can and helically distributed to form primary coils consecutively aligned according to the form of a helix that is wound about the axis of said sliver can to form secondary coils consecutively superposed, said sliver ending at the top in a free end designed to be engaged to feed members in a textile machine.
In particular the process and apparatus of the invention are conceived to automatically arrange a sliver so that it may undergo suitable processings by a textile machine of the type fed from a sliver can.
2. Prior Art
It is known that for the treatment of textile fibers several operations are provided such as carding, combing, drawing and so on, which are adapted to select the fibers and arrange them so that they may undergo the subsequent spinning operations.
To enable them to be submitted to these preliminary operations on the part of the corresponding textile machines, fibers must be arranged in the form of a continuous sliver and suitably collected within big cylindrical containers, usually referred to as "cans".
During the processing by one of said textile machines, the sliver is proportionately drawn out of said cans upon the action of feed members associated with the machine and, after being submitted to the corresponding working operation, is laid down again in an orderly manner into other cans. From the last mentioned cans sliver will be fed to another textile machine designed to carry out the next working.
At the present state of the art the presence of an operator is always necessary to achieve the initial engagement of the sliver to the textile machine members. In greater detail, the operator must find out the free end of the sliver in the can and then engage said end to the machine feed members.
Once this operation is performed, the unwinding of the sliver from the can takes place automatically while the working is being carried out by the textile machine which will automatically stop if a lack of sliver between the feed members should be detected, due to the exhaustion of the sliver itself or the accidental breaking of the same. At this point it will be necessary to intervene manually again to restore the machine operation.
The need of said hand interventions gives rise to some problems.
In fact it has been found that, being a single operator generally entrusted with the control of an important number of textile machines, it may happen that the same is unable to promptly intervene so as to restore the operation of a machine which has stopped for one of the above specified reasons.
It has been found as well that the necessity of said hand interventions makes it inconvenient to use modern automatized transferring techniques, by which it would be advantageously possible to achieve the transferring of cans to the different textile machines in a completely automatic manner. Presently said transferring operations are generally carried out by the same operators who are designed to restore the operation of the textile machines.